Industry support is growing behind Mozilla’s plans to launch a new fully open mobile ecosystem based on HTML5. Mozilla has confirmed that the operating system will use its Firefox brand, powering the launch of smartphones built entirely to open web standards, where all of the device’s capabilities can be developed as HTML5 applications.
Deutsche Telekom, Etisalat, Smart, Sprint, Telecom Italia, Telefonica and Telenor are backing the open Firefox OS as a new entrant to the smartphone marketplace.
Device manufacturers TCL Communication Technology (under the Alcatel One Touch brand) and ZTE plan to manufacture the first devices to feature the new Firefox OS, using Snapdragon processors from Qualcomm.
Telefonica says the first Firefox OS powered devices are expected to launch commercially in Brazil in early 2013 through its commercial brand, Vivo. The Firefox OS for mobile devices is built on Mozilla’s “Boot to Gecko project” which allows HTML5 applications to access the underlying capabilities of a phone, previously only available to native applications. Telefonica’s Digital unit joined forces with Mozilla earlier this year to take this work and showcase a new phone architecture where every phone feature (calling, messaging, games, etc.) is an HTML5 application.
